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With Léonce Rosenberg, Galerie de l'Effort Moderne, Paris (stock no. 5121) [1]; Pierre Faure, Paris, after 1927 (probably) and by 1933 [2]; sold to Louise and Walter C. Arensberg, Los Angeles, through Marcel Duchamp as agent, 1938 [3]; gift to PMA, 1950.
1. Bulletin de l'Effort Moderne, no. 35, May 1927, illus. For the stock number, see Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Paris, 1977, vol. 1, p. 334, no. 226.
2. Zürich, Kunsthaus, "Juan Gris," 1933, no. 71, lent by Pierre Faure, Paris; Faure's name is also inscribed on the back of the painting. This painting may have appeared in Beaux-Arts, Paris, Les créateurs du cubisme, 1935, catalog by Raymond Cogniat, as no. 45 "L'échiquier, 1917" or no. 46, "Jeu de dames, 1917", both "Collection de M. Pierre Faure" (the painting was also known as "Compotier et Damier"). According to Douglas Cooper, Faure formed his large collection of 26 paintings by Gris between 1915 and 1927, buying from Léonce Rosenberg. Some 21 oil paintings owned by Faure appeared in the 1933 Zürich exhibition (all pre-1920). Cooper notes that the entire collection was acquired by Kahnweiler's Galerie Simon in Paris in 1933 (Cooper and Tinterow, The Essential Cubism, 1983, pp. 25, 31), although the listing of Faure as an owner in the 1935 "Créateurs du cubisme" catalog indicates that he kept at least some of the paintings. In addition, none of the Arensberg Gris paintings, all from the Faure collection, have Galerie Simon labels. This suggests that Duchamp acquired them directly from Faure (see note 3).
3. Provenance notes made for the Arensbergs by Marcel Duchamp, dated Sept. 8, 1951 (PMA, Arensberg Archives), simply state that this and the other four paintings by Gris in the Arensberg collection were acquired as a group from a "private collection". However, the back of the photo of "Chessboard" provided by Duchamp to the Arensbergs has the notation "Collection Faure" (originals in PMA, Arensberg Archives).